Time, flies

[j4]

Now that the house is freezing, I'm finally free of fruit flies. All summer the kitchen and dining room were plagued with them; every time I put a piece of food down it would be swarming with tiny winged specks within seconds. Opening the food waste bin released a cloud of them. I sealed everything in tupperwares, in bags, under lids and cloths and tinfoil and cling film, and nothing succeeded in keeping them out. Too tiny for visible flight, they merely scattered themselves from nowhere to everywhere, sown like the seeds of failure.

Part of the reason the house is freezing is that I have to leave the windows open a crack otherwise everything goes mouldy. Clothes at the bottom of drawers smell mildewy; I daren't look behind furniture that's close to outside walls. The bathroom was stained black with mould until the walls were stripped back and repainted with mould-free paint; how many more unrotten days has that bought me? The hours are breathing hotly on the glass, the walls are silently weeping.

If I could successfully keep out the flies and the mould, what other decay would creep in? What other things would seep through the cracks and pile up in damp and crawling heaps to remind me that entropy always wins?

Comments

A veteran speaks:

[nodrog]

Sympatheia:  feeling exactly the same.

In my case the mold is from a roof leak that dripped down into the walls undetected, until I was depressed to crying jags and suicide without realizing what mycotoxins I was breathing until my lungs started to ache as though I were smoking. The war against that mold has been bitter, destructive, and not over.

Get cleaning bleach and a sprayer.  Apply liberally.  That mold wants to kill you.  Go thou and do likewise.

As for the gnats, make sure you leave your sinks clean and dry, and don't leave moist kitchen trash uncovered.  I, too, had a year of them, until November.

Look in plumbing supplies - Wal-Mart, Home Depot - for a product called Damprid. It's a chemical dessicant that comes in small pails that you leave where they're needed.  You'll smell the improvement overnight!

[aldabra]

I strongly recommend Dettol's mould and mildew remover. You spray it on and wait five minutes. *You don't even have to wipe it off again*. If I had known bathroom cleaning was that easy I'd have tried it decades ago.

Though K loathes the smell, and it takes a day or two to lift.

[ewt]

Commiserations. We seemed to mostly avoid the worst of the fruit flies this summer, though they've been bad the last couple of weeks.

I can't get the kitchen window shut all the way, the wooden frame has finally swollen enough that it just sticks.